


Afterimage

by Suzume



Category: Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Ambiguous Relationships, Canon Character Cameos - Freeform, District 4, Friendship, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Original Character(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-09
Updated: 2016-04-09
Packaged: 2018-06-04 22:16:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6677491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Suzume/pseuds/Suzume
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A last memory of Jules remains burned into his mind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Afterimage

**Author's Note:**

> Set sometime between the 65th and 70th Games.  
> Be warned for general referenced/implied victor lifestyle unpleasantness of various types and some mental health issues/suicidal thoughts in particular.
> 
> I've wanted to articulate the main whatever it was between Odysseus and Jules for a long time and I was finally able to get out some of it here....

There's an afterimage of Jules burned into his mind's eye from the last time he saw his friend-junior victor-sort of-almost a cousin alive and even after all these years that final sight stays so alive Odysseus would swear some days he can see Jules walking away up the north beach still. But he doesn't mention it to anyone because he's older now and he's got the kids in the Club to worry about and Song in particular to fuss over, even if she doesn't need it that much anymore because they're linked together for life, and he remembers how Mags and Ms. Surfjan worried when he talked about it before. They all kept kind of close in Four and in some ways that helped, but on the flip side was this nagging concern that all of them would swim or sink together.  
  
Jules had been the weak link. There had been some bad times after that.  
  
There's a part of Odysseus that's poised to guess the new weak link is Finnick. And, hell if that's fair, he knows that the Snow is pushing that product with a force no Four has experienced, but-  
  
It isn't like he doesn't know he's only made it this long after the last fight with Jules (and, oh, they must have loved and hated one another in equal measures after Jules' Games, the peace between them gone, Jules' youthful admiration for him evaporated like water in the desert, his own patience strained since the arena) by forcing himself to believe that Jules didn't walk up the beach that night seeking oblivion.  
  
It was just another aspect of the thing that had always been wrong with Jules. That he didn't understand his own limits.  
  
That was probably how he'd survived his Games in the first place. He was as discreetly unhinged going in as most of them were coming out. It was hard to predict the strategy of a crazy person.  
  
Again, this was more of the unsubstantiated junk Odysseus told himself, but the whole world lied to you anyway, what more were the half-truths you told yourself going to hurt?

  
  
"Coach O, you're going to wear a hole in that window," quips Tommy, leaning against his sparring staff. He's a cheeky kid. Always thought he could say anything to anybody, Odysseus bets. It's not just that he's Song's nephew and been visiting the Village as long as he can remember. He's just that kind of kid.  
  
Annie frowns, because she's respectful, and looks at Tang and Nikea and June, probably hoping that one of these girls who frequently show Tommy up will put him in his place. Odysseus likes Annie. She's very pleasant to be around. He'd rather she stick around Four than ever see the arena. They can't count on every Club member who doesn't go in to be their ally when the moment (whatever it will be, whenever it will be) comes, but some of them are bound to be. Annie Cresta, probably.  
  
"Apparently the right not to get bothered by you has to be earned specially, huh, Tommy?" Nikea picks up on her friend's behalf, poking Tommy in the chest with the end of her own sparring staff. "Being a victor isn't good enough?"  
  
And then the mid-level bunch is all back at it and when Odysseus looks back out the window, Jules' ghost has vanished from the sand.

  
  
He can't remember the sound of Jules' voice anymore. Sure, there are plenty of recordings, but listening to him in District One on his Victory Tour enunciating the soft strangeness of his last name three times over to that beautiful bit of steel-lined confectionary fluff from the Thirty-Sixth (and she's gone too by now and Poppy might as well be, leaving an uncomfortable sort of gap of self-destruction between Beetee and Odin) until she gets it and they smile wondrously at one another- it doesn't sound right to him. It's like he never heard Jules' voice as it was at all. It's not like Jules could have had a way he spoke only to him.  
  
For all that the sound has leeched away, there are plenty of words remaining. "Auntie, tell me a story," lounging on Mags' couch like the spoiled godson he had always been, whether he was three or twenty-three. "I'm cold, I'm cold, so cold," like he would whisper dreaming of the arena, which hadn't really been all that cold in the scheme of arenas, but had somehow chilled him unforgettably through. "No, that's not it. You don't understand what it's like for me," murmured, seeped in sadness rather than anger. Because apparently their both being victors wasn't enough.  
  
Odysseus understood better now how it was different for everyone. Not just because of personality either or other little details of your experience. Snow didn't ask precisely the same things of everyone.  


  
Odysseus goes home quietly from the Club to lay on his own couch, slipping out a few minutes early to avoid Tyde or Shad or some kid catching him. It's one of those days. The other side feels closer some days than others. Some people think it _is_ closer some days than others.  
  
Ms. Surfjan has been by to tidy up a little. He can't bring himself to tell her not to bother. He's been trying to work himself up to telling her that almost since she started. Right after the funeral, when the powers that be said they had to move out of the Village. Not like she hasn't been around here all the time since anyway. Like she's always been since District Four's first volunteer came back alive.  
  
Once Jules was in the arena, Mags tried to confide in Odysseus that she thought it was her fault that Jules had been chosen. It hadn't occurred to her that he thought, for all that he had three siblings the Capitol could still have called, that it had been because of _him._  
  


  
That afterimage fills the space behind his closed eyelids. Jules, who often walked at night, who walked in storms, wet and wild-eyed, walking away, his t-shirt a bit overlarge, his hair longish and streaky from Capitol colorings left untended, barefoot, and with shoulders slumped.  
  
They had kissed once. Jules had trembled with some sort of longing and desperation and Odysseus hadn't wanted to ask the reason for it- 'have you been in love with me all this time?' or was it something else, just one of those victors things- I'm alive and you're alive and this is so much better than- some kind of bulwark against- all the other things that are happening to me.  
  
But that memory was vivid too, in a different way. It was strong, but blurred, like a scene from a recurring dream, one template that played out in endless variations. He remembered Jules clutching at him, clasping at his arm, his shirt, his fingers. The taste of salt. The softness of Jules' sun-pinked cheek beneath his fingers, blending like the tideline into a hint of stubble at his jaw. His hair tousled, thrown back.  
  
They had just held one another. That was all.  
  
As far as Odysseus could tell, no one else had known about it (though with surveillance, he didn't see how that could truly be). He had never told anyone and no one ever said anything to him about it. And so it remained a secret memory, another image nested within that last one, a glowing ember, perhaps the cause of how painfully the other memory burned.

  
  
Odysseus drank for dinner and thought of calling up Danny until he remembered his brother didn't have a phone. He wasn't in the mood to talk to any of his sisters and he didn't like anyone in town to see him in this sort of condition, so he gave it up.  
  
He fell asleep on the couch, drifting off while staring at the ship in a bottle Jules had made him (he'd made a bunch of them), perched on a shelf above the television.  
  
He dreamed that Jules headed out on that last walk, soaked to the skin like in the arena, and this time Odysseus was following behind him, but for all his longer stride he found himself falling further and further behind, like he was contending with the thick, rotting muck of his own arena.  
  
"It's okay to go slow, Odysseus," Jules looked back and smiled at him, "I'll still be waiting whenever you arrive."  
  


  
He awoke while it was still dark and thought for a moment he saw a light on in Jules' empty house, then rubbed his eyes and saw there was nothing.


End file.
